Teller
Teller (born February 14, 1948) is an American magician, illusionist, comedian, writer, and the frequently silent half of the comedy magic duo known as Penn & Teller, along with Penn Jillette. He is known for his advocacy of atheism, libertarianism, free-market economics, and scientific skepticism. He legally changed his name from Raymond Joseph Teller to just "Teller." He is an atheist, debunker, skeptic, and Fellow of the Cato Institute (a libertarian think-tank organization which also lists his partner Penn Jillette as a Fellow). The Cato Institute Association is featured prominently in the Penn and Teller Showtime TV series Bullshit!. Early life Teller was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His parents were of Russian Jewish and Cuban descent. Teller only learned of his Jewish ancestry when he was 50 years old. He attended Central High School and Amherst College and was taught English and Latin at Lawrence High School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. He was selected to be a member of the Central High School Hall of Fame in 2001. Career As a performer Teller does not speak while performing, although there are occasional exceptions, usually when the audience is not aware of it. For example, he provided the voice of "Mofo the psychic gorilla" in their early Broadway show with the help of a radio microphone cupped in his hand. In Zoey's Zoo, an episode of Oh Yeah! Cartoons, he speaks in monosyllables while playing cloned store clerks. Teller's trademark silence originated during his youth, when he earned a living performing magic at college fraternity parties. He found that if he maintained silence throughout his act, spectators refrained from throwing beer and heckling him and focused more on his performance. Other exceptions to his silent act include instances in which his face is covered or obscured, as when he spoke while covered with a plastic sheet in the series premiere of Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, and when he was interviewed while in shadow for the 2010 History Channel documentary, Houdini: Unlocking the Mystery, while Teller spoke at length in an NPR story on Houdini in 2010. Teller appears to have said "Science" in a high-pitched voice in Penn and Teller's appearance on the television show Bill Nye the Science Guy, namely the episode "Light Optics," but he rather mouthed the word while Penn used a ventriloquist technique to make it sound as if Teller had spoken while keeping his mouth from moving. Teller also spoke in his 1987 appearance on NBC's Miami Vice (a fourth season episode titled, "Like a Hurricane"), and had a speaking part in the movie The Aristocrats. He speaks at length about magic performance and sleight-of-hand in the documentary "Penn & Teller's Magic and Mystery Tour." Teller began performing with friend Weir Chrisemer as The Ottmar Scheckt Society for the Preservation of Weird and Disgusting Music. Teller met Penn Jillette in 1974, when they joined a three-person act called Asparagus Valley Cultural Society, which played in San Francisco. In 1981, they began performing exclusively together as "Penn & Teller", an act that continues to this day. As a writer He collaborated with Jillette on three magic books, and he is also the author of "When I'm Dead All This Will Be Yours!": Joe Teller - A Portrait by His Kid (2000), a biography/memoir of his father. The book features his father's paintings and cartoons which were strongly influenced by George Lichty's Grin and Bear It. The book was favorably reviewed by Publishers Weekly. Teller is a coauthor of the Nature Reviews Neuroscience paper "Attention and awareness in stage magic: turning tricks into research" from the November 2008 issue. In 2010 Teller wrote Play Dead, a "throwback to the spook shows of the 1930s and ’40s" that ran September 12–24 in Las Vegas before opening Off Broadway in New York. The show stars sideshow performer and magician Todd Robbins.